Industrial robots are often used in manufacturing processes for applications such as welding, painting, assembly, pick and place, product inspection, testing, and drilling. In some processes, robots are used to perform tasks that might be challenging or dangerous for a human to perform, and often provide advantages in speed, endurance, and precision. In many instances, a variety of robots are used in different work cells to perform different tasks on a workpiece. Within a work cell, the robot often must use a plurality of different end effectors, such as a variety of different drill motor assemblies, to perform different tasks on a given workpiece.
Robot tasks, such as drilling holes in a workpiece, often utilize clamp arms to apply normal forces to one side of the workpiece, thereby stabilizing the workpiece while the other side of the workpiece is being drilled. These clamp arms are typically large, heavy, and difficult to safely handle and store, and therefore are secured to the end effector (e.g., the clamp arms are typically bolted directly to the end effectors, thereby requiring a separate end effector assembly for each of the different clamp arm configurations). Changing the end effector/clamp arm is performed manually, which is time-consuming, interrupts process flow in the work cell, and is potentially unsafe. Furthermore, the number of end effectors required for a given work cell may be dictated by the number of different clamp arms, which significantly increases costs associated with the manufacturing process.